1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic musical instruments. More particularly, the present invention relates to breath controlled electronic musical instruments.
2. Description of the Prior Art and Related Information
Electronic musical instruments have been developed which provide excellent simulation of a wide variety of natural musical instruments. The most common approach to controlling generation of such electronically generated musical tones is by way of a conventional keyboard. In addition to the typical musical voices controlled by keyboard, such as a piano, organ, harpsichord, etc., keyboard controlled electronic musical instruments can also generate a wide variety of other musical voices including stringed instruments, percussion instruments, etc. The advantages of keyboard control include familiarity of the keyboard layout, flexibility to provide different types of chords, split keyboard effects and other forms of tone control, as well as individual note generation. Other types of control systems have also been used, including drum pads for generating electronic drum sounds and other percussion sounds, and some breath controllers which simulate wind instruments. Such keyboards, drum pads and breath controllers have generally been relatively restricted in the number of tone patterns that can be generated, and are typically limited to the specific instrument they are designed to emulate.
One natural musical instrument which has not received as significant a degree of emulation in the electronic musical instrument field as other natural musical instruments, is the harmonica. The harmonica has a number of advantages as an electronic musical control device, especially for novice musicians. In particular, the harmonica is a relatively simple instrument for most performers to learn to play and provides the ability to sound individual notes as well as chords. Nonetheless, the use of a suitable breath controller configured similarly to a harmonica has not been developed which can achieve the desired flexibility and compatibility with electronic musical instrument tone generation systems.
Examples of prior approaches to developing an electronic musical instrument employing a harmonica-like breath controller are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,619,175 to Matsuzaki, issued Oct. 28, 1986, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,566,363 to Arai, issued Jan. 28, 1986. Although these patents are directed to providing an electronic musical instrument control device modelled after a harmonica, they suffer from a number of disadvantages and fail to fully exploit the potentials of a breath controlled electronic musical instrument. Furthermore, such patents do not provide a breath controlled electronic musical instrument capable of fully simulating the effect of a harmonica in a performance environment.
More particularly, the aforementioned prior art electronic musical instruments employing harmonica type controllers require separate through holes, or apertures, to detect the sucking and blowing action of the performer of the instrument, respectively. This results in an unfamiliar breath hole layout (or spacing) for the performer as compared to a conventional harmonica. Due to the importance of slight variations of breath into the holes, this difference in the breath hole layout renders the breath control different from a natural harmonica. Also, the breath controllers disclosed in the aforementioned patents do not provide a system capable of rendering a live harmonica performance sound. For example, a typical live performance of a harmonica will employ a standard hand held acoustic harmonica and a microphone held by the performer adjacent the outlet holes of the harmonica to pick up and amplify the sound. Thus, the sound which is amplified includes not only the harmonica sounds but related sounds generated by the blowing action, as well as any related sound effects generated by the performer. In the aforementioned breath controlled electronic musical instruments, the tone of the harmonica is amplified from signals in the airflow apertures which are responsive only to the air flow pressure and produce only a corresponding harmonica tone. Thus, the related sound effects provided by the performer in a live performance are omitted from the electronic musical instrument, and thus an unrealistic effect is the ultimate result.
Additionally, the above-noted prior art harmonica-like breath controllers fail to exploit the potential flexibility of an electronic musical instrument which enables the performer to control the instrument in a natural way. In particular, the '363 patent attempts to provide additional flexibility in tone generation by including a keyboard on the top of the harmonica-like breath controller unit. However, such a keyboard cannot be activated while the performer holds the harmonica-like controller unit in a natural manner adjacent his mouth. As a result, the keyboard is operated separately and independently from a harmonica-like mouth activated mode in response to a mode setting switch. Therefore, for a given performance, little flexibility is added over a conventional acoustic harmonica despite the potential capability of an electronic musical instrument tone generation system.
For the foregoing reasons, a need presently exists for a breath controlled electronic musical instrument which is capable of providing a natural sounding harmonica performance, as well as providing flexibility for additional electronic musical instrument based sounds and tones, which may be readily controlled by a performer during a performance.